The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [35]
‘So he is contracting debts …’
‘No, your father never contracts debts in town. The moneylenders come to the apartment with the cash, and your father transacts his business with them in his study. You don’t know him in this respect.’
‘So where is he getting this money from?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is that he has money, and has always had some.’
‘But why is he permitting me to sell the silver?’ Izabela asked.
‘Perhaps to vex the family.’
‘And who has bought up his bills of exchange?’
Miss Flora made a gesture of resignation.
‘It was not Krzeszowska,’ she said, ‘I know that for certain. It was either Aunt Hortensja, or …’
‘Or …’
‘Your father himself. You know how often your father has done things to vex the rest of the family and laugh at them afterwards…’
‘Why should he want to vex you and me?’
‘He thinks your mind is at rest. A daughter should trust her father implicitly!’
‘Ah, I understand …’ said Izabela, pondering.
Her black-robed cousin slowly rose and went out softly.
Izabela began to look around her room again, at the black boughs waving outside the windows, at a few sparrows chirping and perhaps building a nest, at the sky which had become uniformly grey without any bright streaks. The question of the Easter collection and her new toilette haunted her, but both matters seemed so trivial to her now, almost laughable, that while thinking of them she imperceptibly shrugged.
She was tormented by other questions: should she not hand the dinner-service over to her aunt? And where was her father getting that money? If he had had it before, why did he allow debts to be contracted from Mikołaj? And if he had none, where was he able to obtain it? If she let her aunt have the dinner-service and silver, she might lose the last opportunity of disposing of them at a profit; but if she sold them for five thousand, these heirlooms might in reality be acquired by the wrong sort of people, just as the Countess said.
Suddenly she broke off: her quick ear had caught a sound in the other rooms. It was a man’s footsteps, level, measured. The carpet in the drawing room stifled them, but in the dining room they again grew louder, and softer again in her bedroom, as if someone were tip-toeing.
‘Come in, papa,’ Izabela said, hearing a tap on her door.
Tomasz came in. She rose from the chaise-longue, but her father made her sit down again. He embraced her, kissed her forehead, then seated himself beside her, glancing at the large looking-glass on one wall. There he observed his own handsome features, his grey moustache, irreproachable black waistcoat and smooth trousers which looked as if they had just come from the tailor, and saw that all was well.
‘I hear’, he told his daughter with a smile, ‘that you have been receiving correspondence that has upset you.’
‘Oh papa, if you only knew the tone aunt uses …’
‘Probably the tone of a woman with disordered nerves. You should not be vexed with her.’
‘If it were only that … But I am afraid she may be right, and that our silver may find its way to the table of some banker or other.’
She leaned her head on her father’s shoulder. Tomasz glanced involuntarily at the mirror and admitted to himself that they formed a remarkably fine couple. The uneasiness on his daughter’s face made a particularly striking contrast with his own tranquillity. He smiled.
‘Bankers’ tables!’ he echoed. ‘Our ancestral silver has already graced the table of Tartars, Cossacks and rebellious peasantry — far from disgracing us, this has only brought us honour. He who fights must risk losing.’
‘They were lost in wars …’ Izabela interposed.
‘And is there no war on today? It is the weapons that have changed, that’s all. Instead of an axe or scythe or scimitar, they fight with roubles. Joanna understood this very well when she sold her family estate — not merely a dinner-service — and demolished the ruins of her castle to build granaries.’
‘So we have lost…’ Izabela whispered.
‘No, my child,’ said Tomasz, straightening his back. ‘We are just